Twenty-third
Sunday (Year B)
(Isaiah
35:4-7; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37)
In our reading from
the prophet Isaiah we heard:
Say to those whose hearts are frightened, "Be strong, fear not! Behold, here is your God, He comes with
vindication; with divine recompense He
comes to save you."
For a small nation,
conscious of being God’s Chosen People and having, nevertheless, a long history
of suffering as a pawn in the conflicting endeavours at empire building by the
surrounding powers in the Fertile Crescent, such a prophecy of salvation tended to become, as
the years passed by and the suffering and humiliation piled up, more and more
commonly regarded as fighting talk; and that, certainly, was how many Jews in
the days of Jesus, understood them.
Currently experiencing occupation by alien forces of the Roman State
they longed for God to help them overthrow -- through the promised Messiah -- the military might of
their hated and despised oppressors. With such expectations, of course, they
were pre-disposed to see Jesus’ miracles, such as His most recent feeding the
five thousand in the desert, as evidence that He was surely the one they were
looking for:
Here is your God, He comes with vindication; with divine recompense He
comes to save you.
However, the
reaction of the religious authorities to Jesus, especially that of the
Pharisees who were most influential with the people generally, was
different. The Pharisees thought
themselves well prepared for God’s coming judgment -- and the possible
appearance of a popularly-expected political Messiah -- thanks to their
meticulous observance not only of God’s Law as laid down in the Torah, but also
of their own oral traditions from the elders.
Consequently they regarded Jesus with suspicion, despite His
miracles, because He was not one of them
and quite evidently did not consider Himself or His disciples to be bound by
Pharisaic traditions. What was much
worse, however, was that He did not regard the Pharisees themselves as being
purified and justified by their meticulous practices, nor was He afraid to
publicly rebuke them for their failings:
You nullify the word of God in favour of your tradition that you have
handed on. And you do many such things. (Mark 7:13)
And so the prophecy
from Isaiah with which we began our readings today is suited to both people and
Pharisees … people who looked for a warrior Messiah and Pharisees who did not
appreciate that they themselves needed a Messiah to heal them of a spiritual
sickness they did not recognize. It
was, indeed, a prophecy proclaiming Messianic help for both the frightened and
the blind:
Say to those whose hearts are frightened, "Be strong, fear not! Behold, here is your God, He comes with
vindication; with divine recompense He
comes to save you. Then will the
eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the
lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.”
Jesus’ journeying
beyond the confines of Israel, alone in today’s Gospel reading but surely accompanied by His disciples as Matthew tells
us would have been, in the course of things, a novel and intimately informal group
learning-experience for His disciples.
Avoiding the militant enthusiasm of those awaiting the promised Messiah
in the Jewish homeland Jesus intended to take them to territory -- the
Decapolis -- quite recently freed from Jewish rule by the Romans under Pompey
and in that His actions were louder, clearer, and more easily appreciated and
assimilated than even most carefully chosen words. On the way His teaching would be of the type best suited to
free His disciples from the legalistic formalism of the Scribes and Pharisees:
with His unfailing Filial awareness of and attentiveness to His Father’s
abiding presence and guiding will confirming His unique wisdom and holiness in
their eyes, while His sympathetic attitude to and dealings with people they
encountered on their way -- the many foreigners (a word Jesus Himself used),
and the relatively few and fragile, perhaps even alienated, Jews who approached
them -- proved surprisingly and fascinatingly beautiful, delighting them not
least because it demanded nothing so much as human awareness and sympathy
together with the spiritual joy of a humble and admiring disciple.
And people brought to Him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged
Him to lay His hand on him.
Why did ‘people
bring the man’ to Jesus? Were they
perhaps Jewish people living elsewhere and bringing either one of their own to
Jesus or perhaps even a friendly pagan?
Did they bring him because he was not able, or perhaps had not wanted,
to come to Jesus himself? Maybe he had
become bitter over the years with his trials and only came ‘under pressure’, so
to speak, from good friends? Perhaps we
may have someone here in a situation not unlike like that of the man St. James
spoke of in today’s second reading, someone ‘poor and shabby’, someone not
immediately likeable.
Jesus took him off by
himself away from the crowd.
The man was being
given the opportunity to experience personal closeness with Jesus to overcome
his original apprehensions.
Jesus put His finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue.
Jesus was doing
things not unexpected by the man, thus calming him down and hopefully stirring
up embers of confidence and trust.
Then Jesus looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him
“Ephphatha! -- that is, ‘Be opened!”
Here, with that
glance up to heaven and the audible groaning of Jesus are we perhaps privileged
to glimpse the man’s introduction to faith in the goodness of God and the
saving suffering of Our Lord? Anyhow,
The man’s ears were immediately opened, his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly;
thus he was enabled
to join with all in their heart-felt acclamation:
He has done all things
well!
Now, let us look at
Jesus as we see Him more broadly portrayed in the Gospel. He had, quite recently, performed the miracle
of feeding the five thousand and then -- in an open confrontation --
discomfited both the Pharisees and Scribes who had sought to accuse Him and His
disciples for failing to observe the
traditions of the elders. Jesus
had, at that time, been close to being hailed by the common people as the
expected Messiah, their longed-for, victorious, leader, and that experience
would seem to have been in the forefront of His thinking, for He went,
straightway, out of Israelite territory and set out, ultimately for the
Greek-speaking Decapolis, where Jewish expectations and practices were
smothered in what could be regarded as a heavy pagan smog.
On the way, Jesus
and (according to St. Matthew) His disciples, walking the coastal region near
Tyre and Sidon unnoticed and free, had been discovered by a woman who pestered
Him and His disciples to heal her daughter and we then learned of that most memorable
conversation:
Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's
bread and throw it to the little dogs.
Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's
crumbs. (Mark 7:27-28)
Jesus immediately
recognized that such an answer was far above the woman’s natural capabilities:
He said to her, "For this saying, go your way; the demon has gone out
of your daughter."
“For this saying” ….
Jesus was indeed struck by what the woman said and He continued walking in this
pagan district, going, we are told, towards the Sea of Galilee, but not
directly, choosing rather to take a long, round-about, route leading, ultimately, to the Decapolis region. He had not wanted to be lionized by
over-enthusiastic Israelites dreaming of the Lion of Judah crushing Israel’s
oppressors, and for that reason had entered this non-Jewish region; and now,
having encountered the Syro-Phoenecian woman so beautifully gifted by His
Father, He decided to continue on this journey through to the Decapolis ….
perhaps His Father still had some further purpose for Him there?
Such was indeed the
case, because, in our Gospel passage today, Jesus was invited by His Father, to perform yet another
miracle: this time upon a deaf-mute man, a miracle fulfilling what the prophet
Isaiah had long foretold:
Then will the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf be
cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will
sing.
Jesus always walked
before His Father, looked for His Father’s presence, listened for His Father’s
voice, and after this relatively short journey outside Israel He had brought
back His immediate disciples to Israel and God’s Chosen People with greater confidence in, and
admiration for, Him Whom they had heard the lips of both suspect Jews and
foreign Greeks unite in praise saying:
He has done all things
well!
Moreover, when the
time would come for them to be sent out to baptize all nations they would be
able to recall with deep love and inspired confidence what they had originally
so lovingly experienced and deeply assimilated in the presence of Him Who had
so convincingly shown Himself to be both Perfect God and Perfect man.
Let us now take part
in the Holy Sacrifice with like appreciation: rejoicing in the presence of Our
Lord and Saviour, while confidently reviewing and renewing our own personal
calling before the Father, for the glory of His Name, the exaltation of Mother
Church and for the true well-being of our world.
